How to lose weight like an economist
Did you stuff your face over the holidays? Feeling guilty? Want to do something about it? Or at least read about what other people are doing about the obesity epidemic–and whether more government is the solution? My friend Eric Finkelstein, a health economist at Research Triangle Institute’s Public Health Economics Program, has co-authored a terrific book coming out this week. The Fattening of America: How The Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What To Do About It is a witty, unique, and insightful analysis of bloated America. He looks not just at the causes of obesity, but also the role of technology in both abetting and solving it. In contrast to the unbridled Big Nanny approach of Mike Huckabee, Finkelstein weighs the costs and benefits of various government interventions. From RTI:
The authors use humor and contemporary examples including the Biggest Loser, Jared, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and many others to explain how economic considerations drive our behavior to make us eat more and exercise less. In doing so, the book provides an understanding of why combating obesity is such a challenge.
“There are simply many more incentives to gain weight than to lose it,” Finkelstein said. “We are, in fact, victims of our success as a nation. Unfortunately, the prize is diabetes, stroke and an increased likelihood of disabilities.”
The book explores the role that business and policy makers play in America’s obesity epidemic, and explains that successful obesity strategies need to do exactly the opposite of where the economy is taking us. They need to make it cheaper and easier to be thin — not fat.
“I argue that technology and an advancing economy are responsible for the rise in obesity rates, but they will also be responsible for solving it,” Finkelstein said. “I don’t just mean bariatric surgery and obesity pills, I’m thinking of cool new technologies that will reengineer physical activity back into our lives. The Wii active video game and Dance Dance Revolution (or DDR if you’re cool) are two great examples of using technology to be more physically active. I’m sure many more are on the way.”
However, because obesity is a natural by-product of an expanding economy, the authors question whether or not obesity prevention efforts, even if successful, would actually leave some individuals worse off.
Private companies are now offering cash incentives to employees to lose weigh. Finkelstein gives that approach a thumbs-up:
How’s this for incentive to stick to your new year’s resolutions: cold hard cash. Many companies are offering a little extra in your paycheck to help you shed the pounds. Not only does Stefanie Chiras’ company pay her to develop computer memory sub-systems, but a little extra to eat right. “Having work sponsor it makes you kind of feel like someone is buying into It,” said Chiras. “And then certainly the cash at the end of the day is an incentive.”
Chiras works for IBM. She gets an additional $150 in her paycheck for tracking her eating habits online and losing weight. “When I reach for that next unhealthy thing, I think, oh, but I have to log it in to the tool.”
IBM launched its voluntary wellness incentive program four years ago – handing each employee up to $300 a year for completing healthy eating, exercise and preventative care programs. Health care bills for corporate America are skyrocketing. Each year, IBM spends about $2 billion globally, and obese workers are driving up the cost.
Researchers say offering cash incentives to employees is actually a low-cost way to motivate them to cut out the fat and get on the treadmill.
Eric Finkelstein, author ‘The Fattening of America’, said, “It is essentially costless for the firm. If nobody loses any weight then they don’t spend any money.”
So many IBM employees have lost weight, stopped smoking or otherwise improved their health that the company has paid out $130 million, but it’s saving about three times as much.
So, you want to learn how to lose weight like an economist? You’ll have to buy the book to find out.
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Please, I am very sorry:
PRAYERS NEEDED!
as far as the weight thing goes….0i 0i 0i !!!but I am not quitting ciggies!! sorry.
For those that don’t know, Research Triangle is in the Triangle of NC. We have some of the finest medical research facilities in the world here. It’s near the Raleigh-Durham airport.
Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill University hospitals are a large part of it. We also have ground breaking medical research just down the road at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center.
If you want to know about medical technology, Research Triangle Park, in NC, is the silicon valley of biotechnology.
Count me in.
I can stand to lose 10 pounds, I’ll buy the book!
Michelle, break out the Red Bull - the government is always the solution!
Ok not. This book sounds interesting.
Yes, I have said a prayer for Kenya.
Hey Thacker, I am very familiar with the RTP. My husband and I work in the pharmaceutical industry. We were going to relocate to Cary, NC a couple of years ago…instead we ended up in NJ.
Wasn’t aware that Cary is considered a Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. My husband didn’t take to kindly to being called and yankee and quite frankly neither did I although, I am one.
If people really want to lose weight, and keep it off, I have some helpful tips…
1) If it wasn’t food 100 years ago, it’s not food now.
2) If you can’t wash it, it isn’t food.
Simply put, junk food (stuff bought in package form for immediate consumption,) fast food (anything bought over a counter,) and processed food, is should be considered poison.
If you take the time to prepare your own food, you will eat well, get full, create a healthy body, and save money.
I know of what I speak. As of Dec. 22, 2007, I have lost 115 lbs. following the above advice. I run 2-3 miles a day, and my bloodwork is nearly perfect.
It took one smart doctor to disabuse me of 40 years of “dietary knowledge.” Companies pushing supplements, and weightloss plans (IMHO) have no vested interest in getting people thin and healthy…it would put them out of business. Buy fresh produce, and quality proteins, fix them without tons of fat and oil, and be amazed at the results!
Hey 30, I was unaware of that acronym of Cary. Cary is actually one of the nicer areas to live in and I can see the appeal to out of staters.
As much noise as we make about yankees, southern hospitality isn’t a myth. The problem that most Southerners have with Yankees is that when they move here because they didn’t like it where they were from, they try to change this area to be like the one they left.
If yankees could come down here without trying to change it there would be NO problems (ie. we didn’t do it this way in NYC. Or, why can’t we drink before noon on Sunday. Or what do you mean this is a DRY county. Or ya’ll don’t have a lottery - we do now because of all the yankees and it is draining funds from welfare recipients as predicted.). In a sense, we see that type of invasion much like people see the desire for Spanish language across the country.
We love everybody. We welcome everybody with open arms. But we also love our way of life down here and resent outsiders coming here to enjoy it but change it.
Thacker, I take your point, it’s valid.
No worries about us though. My hubby is a Southerner and quite frankly I prefer the South to the North. Which is surprising for most folks to learn about since I was borned and raised up here and the way of life in the south, is ah, different…
We’ll be headin’ south at some point in the next five years. My in-laws live in VA. If they had an pharma industry there, I’m a certain we would be there already.
Eat, drink, work and exercise in moderation while happily living life every day: The best cure for obesity. Eliminate TV and the computer as much as possible. Rich enjoyment comes from life experience and human interaction not from processed food.
Processed and fast foods are popular, because we’ve become an instant gratification society all wrapped up in our own lives. When I was growing up, tv wasn’t available until late afternoon. No computors or nitendos either. We were outside playing. My brother and I ate like elephants but burned it all off, through activity. Nowadays, the kids in the neighborhood, are rarely out, after school. Inside, sitting, is the rule. We’ve got rid of P.E. in schools, and now wonder why our kids are fat. Now, everyone has a diet to sell. They will even send you the meals! No work diet. Instant gratification. I still lose weight “the old fashioned way”…cut calories, and exercise. It works.
The first thing I thought of when I read Michelle’s title, was this wsj article
Your nic makes me hungry! Except I think you spelled “taters” wrong…
I got two problems. My recent sudden weight gain (30 lbs) is from quitting smoking, not eating. Can’t do “weight-bearing” exercise (replaced hips and arthritis in spine). Also can’t do “rigorous” exercise because of emphysema (reason for quitting smoking). I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
I’m doing the water and the breathing but still 5′nuthin’ and 130.
There is a solution to stop people from becoming fat slobs. It is called Tennis. Not wii tennis but the real thing. It is not like golf where you walk an doccasionally shake a stick. Tennis is constant moving all the time and you use your brain all the time, just like in chess. It is the greatest game there is. It is difficult, to be sure, and even after years of tennis, you still have a long long way to go. But once you get the hang of it, you will think nothing of playing for two hours in 95 degree heat. Indeed, you will love it. I am an evangelist for the sport and new converts are always welcome (Ut oh, I think I just got Mike Huckabee mad at me!)
Ski Club of Washington had tennis every Wednesday, but that was 20 years ago for me. We used to play nights, in S. Arlington also, on weekends. You could play all night, pushing the lights button every hour. We would play until you couldn’t serve anymore. LOL.
Cutting out soda and junk food actually does work. I am a paraplegic. Last year I had to be in the hospital for 9 months. While there I decided to also lose weight. I am 6 ft tall. I went from 230lbs down to 165lbs. Keep in mind that the only real exercise option if have is pushing this chair. As unfair as it may be I do have little sympathy for the truly obese as it is a self-inflicted problem.
Funny, but our life expectancies seem to be inching forward, obesity or otherwise.
A company paying employees to lose weight or stop smoking? What about those who don’t need to lose weight or aren’t smoking in the first place? What do they get?
I worked for a Florida hospital that had a great wellness program…it was based on accumulating points which could ultimately be redeemed for cash. Points were earned for attending fitness classes, logging time in the gym, participating in weight loss/smoking cessation programs, and maintaining already healthy weight, cholesterol, body fat numbers. It seemed to work well for all of us!
Except it’s not “self-inflicted” for everyone. Weight gain can be a side effect of some medications, of thyroid disease, of metabolic dysfunction…
I hate your smarmy “you fatties are all just stupid and lazy” attitude. It’s the same thought process as the “progressive” assertion that conservatives are all mouth-breathing sheep too stupid to vote for a “real” president–you think you’re smarter and therefor better than “those people.” Maybe. Probably not.
this is all very simplistic, as from the ‘cancer cure’ i received to stay alive my thyroid and pituitary glands were damaged. two key glands for metabolizing the body’s burning of food. i exercise harder than a 30 year old and eat moderately, but still nothing. after 45 years of weighing only 115 lbs. i am now considered obese and nothing works. medications do not regulate the thyroid.
so.. stop and think before you make comments cause not everyone is over eating and not exercising. my trainer could not believe my agility. i told him.. i have worked out all my life, and used to be a runner. now i can’t ..
so if a company wants to provide me an incentive for losing weight, i say find a cure for these two glands’ malfunction. otherwise shut the F* up..
For people (like me) that have a weight problem because of over-eating, the Sonoma Diet is worth a try. I’ve taken off almost all the extra weight, and kept it off for months.
Sorry if this sounds like a cheesy ad or something, but I’ve tried a lot of diets and this was the only one that really worked, and has enabled me to maintain the weight loss.